


True American

by arboreal_overlords



Category: New Girl, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Brief and canonical Nick/Reagan, F/M, Gen, Identity Porn, In this house we love and respect Reagan, New Girl but Nick is Spider-Man the whole time, Nick Miller as Peter B. Parker, Non-Linear Narrative, Russell is a supervillain, Schmidt is the last to find out, Tran is Nick's mentor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-23 20:08:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20345971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arboreal_overlords/pseuds/arboreal_overlords
Summary: “What I can’t understand,” Schmidt began, having finally passed the hysteria, denial, and concern stages, “is the distribution of it all. New York has wall to wall magnificence and we get Nick?!?”“Ah, Los Angeles,” Jess sighed. “Not the superhero we wanted, but the superhero we deserve.”--Or, Nick Miller gets bit by a spider, drops out of law school, loses his girlfriend, and gains some superpowers. He very occasionally and resentfully saves the day.





	True American

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rainbowninja167](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowninja167/gifts).

> Alright people, let's do this one more time! 
> 
> I watched Into the Spiderverse and then re-watched all of New Girl with the headcanon that Nick was secretly Spiderman and honestly IT WORKS. Russell was so obviously a supervillain and Nick Miller is the only superhero who needs his superpowers just to stay alive and healthy. Unfortunately, none of the other Spiderfolk from ItSV are here. Sorry! I might write a sequel where Nick becomes a very reluctant mentor of Miles Morales, but that would adhere more closely to the movie. 
> 
> Nick’s characterization in this fic is a mix of canonical New Girl Nick and Peter B. Parker. I loosely follow canon up to about midway Season 5. I have never been to L.A. and reference very little L.A. geography; if I mention a place, it’s probably from haphazard googling. 
> 
> For rainbowninja167, who basically co-authored the premise of this fic with me back in January with an all-caps text chain that alienated many of our friends, and who also supported me through the post-breakup New Girl binge that fueled the rest.

p> 

As Coach loves reminding him, none of this would have happened if Nick had stopped surfing for curbside furniture in the weirder areas of L.A. 

“It’s an untapped wilderness out here,” Nick had said, gesturing out the window of the car as they drove through narrow side-streets. “All of the lazy undergrads are limiting their furniture search to a twenty-mile radius, but not us! We are pioneers of the curb, my man. We are—”

“—Do not say ‘pioneers of the curb’ to anyone,” Coach broke in. “That’s not a thing. Let’s find a coffee table and just never tell Schmidt where we got it.”

They were driving slowly past a series of what looked like abandoned offices. As they idled by an alleyway, both of them craned their necks to see a large, shadowy lump set back against the entryway to a crumbling building.

“Is that a couch?” Nick asked eagerly, climbing out of the passenger seat. “I’m going to check it out.”

“No, dude, there’s probably bedbugs on that thing by now,” Coach protested.

“Bedbugs don’t like leather,” Nick assured him over his shoulder as he walked down the alleyway. “I read it somewhere, I think they’re scared of cows.”

“Nick!” Coach hissed, leaning over to the passenger side window. “Nick! Do not tap that wilderness!”

Nick flapped his hand dismissively at Coach while inspecting the couch. The warehouse door behind it was strung with yellow caution tape, and there was a buzz of voices and a crackling of radios behind it, even though it was nine at night and all of the windows were dark. The couch itself was once a generic square leather loveseat, the kind of sterile furniture you might find in a dentist’s waiting room. It was threadbare and ripped at the edges, with a large stain on the arm that Nick couldn’t totally make out in the dark.

“Let’s try this puppy out” Nick said quietly, and launched himself onto the cushions. It had a surprising amount of give, and as he relaxed against it, his arms spread across the back of the couch, he tried to imagine it in their loft, holding all three of them and Caroline as they argued over a basketball game.

A small and piercing pain in his left hand made Nick yelp and jump up from the couch. Something black and shiny skittered over his palm and Nick flung it away with a noise that Coach would later describe as “screaming like a little girl.”

“I told you!” Coach said triumphantly as Nick danced in pain.

_“My hand is on fire!”_ Nick hissed. “That was not a bedbug, that was some kind of scorpion!”

“Take off your clothes!” Coach yelled at him as Nick got closer to the car.

“Don’t be stupid,” Nick snapped, holding his left hand aloft. “I’m not taking off my clothes, it bit my hand and then I killed it.”

“Seriously, if Schmidt finds out that you sat on that couch, I think he might make you shave your entire body. I can’t watch that. Take off your clothes.”

“Oh my god,” Nick said, trying to pull off his tee-shirt with one hand. The voices from inside of the building suddenly got louder. Light spilled into the alleyway as the back door to the warehouse swung open. “Oh my god!” Nick repeated with more urgency, kicking off his shoes and diving into the car. “Go! Go!”

Once they arrived back at the loft and Coach threw his car into park, they both looked down at Nick’s hand, which was swelling to a puffy red hive between his thumb and pointer finger.

Nick hid his hand under the abdomen of his jacket, which was now hanging over his bare torso. “Do not say anything to Schmidt,” he warned.

“What are you going to do, pretend to be doing the pledge of allegiance for the next twenty-four hours?” Coach asked. “Of course I’m not going to say anything.”

**X X X X**

The next morning, Nick woke up to his usual mild hangover and existential regret, but felt weirdly . . . . good? Like he might contemplate running a few laps around the kitchen table before heading to Torts class. The swelling in his hand had gone down, and the skin was smooth and unblemished. Caroline was a mess of ginger hair and flannel pajamas next to him, and Nick gave her a fond and confused pat on the head before shrugging on a clean hoodie and heading to campus.

The drive to campus was surreal. Nick could suddenly hear things, like the police sirens from an accident half a mile away, or the weird whining noise that came when he hit the breaks (he really needed to go to the mechanic). Even with his windows closed, he could hear the tearful conversation of the girl in the car next to him, who was dealing with a real doozy of an ex.

The douchebag in the Audi in front of him braked hard to make a sudden turn onto the freeway, but by the time that Nick realized what was happening, his car had already smoothly changed lanes, missing its taillight by a whisper. It was as if his hands knew what to do before his brain had caught up. “_What are you doing, hands_?” he whispered, staring down at them intently.

Sitting in Torts class, Nick attempted to take notes while time moved like maple syrup around him. Was he high? Had he eaten any of those weird Latvian gumdrops that Winston had mailed to them?

“Mr. Miller,” his Torts professor broke in sharply. “If you’d like to look up from what is so fascinating in your notebook, perhaps you’d like to explain to the class the legacy of Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California.”

Nick had not done the reading, because Nick was searching for a coffee table last night and then was trying to sneak into his own apartment while shirtless and possibly bitten by what he was starting to suspect was neither a bedbug nor a scorpion. In a long-term existential and probably biological sense, Nick was screwed. But in a short term sense, Nick was also screwed.

“Today, Mr. Miller,” Professor Walsh pressed, and Nick clutched his textbook even more tightly. When he attempted to rip open the cover — it was Chapter 5, wasn’t it, that dealt with Tarasoff? Something about medical professionals and bodily harm?— it stuck to his hand. He tried to shake it off, only to stare in horror as the six-pound textbook disobeyed all laws of gravity and moved with his palm, the pages unfurling into a wide and heavy half-moon that Nick couldn’t feel at all.

“Sorry, Professor Walsh,” he said, standing abruptly. “I need to go to—” Nick darted out from his row. He should have tripped several times and probably taken a header down at least five tiers of amphitheater seating, but he found himself braced at the bottom of the stairs. Did he just jump that?

“The hell is wrong with Miller?” someone muttered behind him, and Nick could suddenly hear a wave of whispers behind him in perfect, cruel clarity. He’s always known what most of his classmates think of him, but its one thing to anxiously speculate and another thing to get the inaudible murmurs of _midwestern townie trash_ or _idiot stoner_ in high definition.

Nick clutched at his backpack and his disordered, fluttering notes and ran out of the classroom, registering the movement of dozens of bodies that pushed past him in the hallway. When a security guard sidled up to stop his fevered progress toward a door — any door— Nick raised an arm to push him out of the way. The guard flew ten feet and collided with a wall.

Nick stopped in horror. “Hey man, are you okay?” he asked, hovering until the security guard yelled loudly into his radio while looking up at him in confusion and shock. “That was unintentional!” Nick yelled over his shoulder as he ran in the opposite direction, throwing open a door that he had hoped would lead to a staircase and instead displayed a musty supply closet with a single narrow window. “I have no idea what is happening to my body!”

Nick edged into the closet and threw open the window as the shouting behind him got louder. He was easily four stories up, but there was the roof of an entryway only twenty feet down. “Parkour!” he said weakly, trying to imitate Schmidt’s confidence, and launched himself out the window.

Nick shrieked and scrabbled for a few seconds before realizing that he wasn’t falling. His hands were affixed to the brink wall right outside of the window, where Nick was crouched like an extremely panicked koala.

“This is a dream,” Nick says to himself hysterically, his eyes bugging out at the ground that waved gently below him. “This is not happening in reality.”

**X X X X**

Nick first assumed (and he will never, ever tell this to anyone) that he had contracted an STD; the kind that his dad was always warning him about that had weird and probably medically inaccurate names. Could you get an STD from a spider bite? He had been too busy giggling with Winston over the textbook illustrations of genitals to remember much about STDs from seventh-grade health class. Caroline was going to _kill _him.

Because Nick is a responsible boyfriend, he went to get tested at the university clinic. Because he’s not a responsible adult, he tried to give a fake name.

“Look,” the undergraduate working the desk sighed, “there isn’t a Julius Pepperwood enrolled here, so either you’re not a student or that’s not your real name. I promise you that no one here cares whether you have chlamydia.”

“Fine,” Nick grumbled, shaking the sign-in sheet that was stuck to his hand.

After being swabbed and poked and having to pee in a cup, they stuck him in a room with a doctor who looked like Tom Sellack.

Nick, how many units of alcohol do you drink in a week?” The doctor asked.

“I don’t know,” Nick blustered, “an average amount? What does that have to do with my penis?“

“I’m looking at your medical records,” the doctor said, “at least the last time they were updated, which seems to be almost ten years ago. Did you know that you were on track for diabetes? And also had the liver of a fifty-year-old?”

Nick sighed. “No, but that doesn’t surprise me.”

The doctor continued to look at his folder of papers with alarm. “Now your liver is in perfect condition, and you have the cardiovascular health of an Olympic athlete. How does that happen?”

“Oh, you know,” Nick stalled, his back beginning to sweat profusely (and why couldn’t _that _have gone away?) “I took up, the exercise. Lots of spinach.” He made a flexing gesture that was supposed to represent Popeye, but the doctor just squinted at him.

“I’d like to perform an EKG on you. Maybe a CAT scan. If your symptoms are as serious as you say, perhaps these readings are an error-”

Nick bolted out of his seat. “No thank you sir, I can’t afford that. Look, as long as I’m not dying or poisoned—”

“—Poisoned?” The doctor asked, suddenly looking at Nick more intently. “Why would you be poisoned?”

“I just had a bug bite me the other day downtown. The chunky kind.” Nick made a crawly motion with his hands. “Now I’m suddenly very sticky, and it’s weird.”

“You got bit by a spider and you came to a university walk-in clinic for an STI screening?” the doctor asked, moving slowly over every word.

“I take my sexual health very seriously!” Nick said shrilly.

**X X X X X**

Nick ran home, which weirdly took less time than he would have guessed. By the time he arrived in front of the loft, he was still covered in sweat from class and his appointment, but not from the eight-mile run, which was . . . odd?

“What is going on with you?” Schmidt asked him. “Did someone try and get you to register to vote again? You can just walk away from those tables, Nick.”

This conversation was thankfully interrupted by a loud knocking on the loft door, which Schmidt opened while still glowering in concern at Nick. Caroline stepped through, looking pale and stressed.

“Caroline!” Nick said in relief, pushing his sweaty hair out of his face. “I have so much to tell you. I ran eight miles. I think I need to quit law school. I definitely do not have an STD.”

“Nick,” Caroline said gently, pushing him down into a chair. “We need to talk.”

As it turns out, with great power comes a lot of crap that Nick was not prepared to deal with.

Caroline breaks up with him. He quits law school because he can’t breathe there (and campus security might not let him back in). He gets a job at the Griffin. He deals with his breakup like a champ. The doctor from the clinic calls him several times and leaves increasingly urgent messages, so Nick disconnects his cell and gets one of those pre-paid call-as-you-go phones that causes Schmid’s lip to curl. “Nick, are you dealing drugs?” he asked with only semi-condescending concern.

“This is my number now,” Nick insisted, slapping a post-it on the loft refrigerator. “I’m off the grid.”

He leaves Caroline several messages to let her know his new number.

(Okay, he did not deal with his breakup like a champ)

At first, the only upside seemed to be that Nick could drink and eat whatever he wanted without worrying about permanently damaging his internal organs. That really came in handy during the breakup-induced benders that, more often than not, left him with beer bottles literally stuck to his hands.

At one point, Schmidt dragged him to his room after Nick fell asleep slumped over a pizza box. “M’not gonna die of scurvy,” Nick slurred at him.

“Nick,” Schmidt grumbled, even though he definitely lifted more than Nick’s bodyweight now as part of his ridiculous regimen. “This must be rock bottom.”

“S’fine.” Nick said. “S’fixed. Spiders, man”

“You are a troubled enigma, Nick Miller.”

The other side-effects, or the crap that comes with great power and not dying of cirrhosis, arrives shortly afterward.

**X X X X X**

The thing is, Nick had grown up with superhero cartoons and comics just like any other kid. 

And sure, Nick had found them entertaining, found the action and brash confidence of Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent alluring, but never actually wanted to be a superhero himself. The whole gig, he had said to Winston, just seemed like a lot of work. 

“A lot of work?” Winston had repeated in disbelief. “Nick, Bruce Wayne spends his free time at parties hanging with models. And then he fights for justice!” 

“I don’t know if I’d want that kind of responsibility.” 

“Models!” Winston insisted. “Justice!”

Still, the idea of being responsible for all of Chicago was overwhelming; Nick could manage maybe his neighborhood and a few other blocks, but that was pushing it.

During Nick’s first year of law school, he sat with Schmidt and Coach and watched the Battle of New York on CNN. Coach was quietly freaking out about aliens and Schmidt was pacing on the phone with his mother, who was probably safe at fifty miles away from the battle because no alien in the galaxy would attempt to invade Long Island. Nick wisely kept that thought to himself.

In retrospect, Nick doesn’t remember having much of an emotional reaction to the reality of hostile alien life other than _this may as well happen_. After the dust had cleared and several hundred people had been mourned, he remembered rolling his eyes at Schmidt waxing poetic about Tony Stark, who he held somewhere between Michael Keaton and God.

Jess didn’t know them yet, but if she had been there then she would have looked at him with those big eyes and said something about his eternal pessimism, about how he always expected the very fabric of reality to let him down.

Nick kept quiet while Schmidt panic-yells through the phone because he’s _totally_ right about Area 51, but he also couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be terrified for the people you love when they’re threatened by a new and unbelievable kind of danger.

He finds out, later.

**X X X X**

**Present Day **

Later, Schmidt would turn it into a whole thing. “Do you realize,” he said, pacing around the loft “that you have a fairly passable origin story?”

“Origin story?” 

“You know,” he said, waving his hands in Nick’s general direction. “A sensitive but troubled soul with crippling father issues and an ill-advised life trajectory is burdened with great power and responsibility. He is guided by a mysterious and ambiguously Asian mentor--” 

“Jar!” Jess called from the couch, where she had retreated after hour three of Schmidt’s hysterics. 

“Yeah, Tran is Korean, man, don’t be a jackass,” Nick protested.

Schmidt continued to ignore Nick and glowered at Jess, grabbing his wallet and stuffing in a bill without looking down at its denomination. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you kept this secret from me, ” he said, raising his voice to reach the far bedrooms. “You ALL were complicit in this treachery. What possible rationale--”

“Cop!” Winston and Aly yelled simultaneously through Winston’s bedroom door.

Coach was working his way through a six-pack next to Jess on the couch, to all appearances successfully tuning out the last several hours. “Honestly, I think I found out by accident,” he said, yawning.

“He did,” Jess affirmed. “He walked in on Nick changing once.”

“You can’t _walk in_ on someone changing behind a dumpster,” Coach argued.

“Fine!” Schmidt said. “I accept that Winston and Aly were in cahoots with you professionally—”

“In cahoots?” Nick asked amusedly. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Nick, you have been risking your life to combat the criminal plots of janky west-coast supervillains for the last five years” Schmidt snarled. “Now is not the time to question my syntax.”

“Yeah, yeah, point taken,” Nick mumbled, trying to look contrite. “_Where is Cece_?” he whispered loudly at Jess.

“I think she’s probably murdering our janky west-coast supervillain,” Jess replied, not bothering to whisper. “Who, by the way, Schmidt, I also dated, so watch it.”

“Which brings me to my point,” Schmidt responded, sweeping his arms like a belligerent orchestra conductor. “How did Jess know before me? Jess! Before me?”

“I made him his costume!” Jess protested. “I was helpful!”

“You made him this?” Schmidt asked incredulously, waving Nick’s suit in the air, which was a little worse for wear after the events of the evening. “I’m sorry, do they stock Teflon and nanoparticles at JoAnn Fabrics now?”

“No, the fancy people at the Avengers Initiative made me wear that after that electrical plant thing.“ Nick said, smiling loyally at his girlfriend. “Jess made me my first suit.”

Schmidt frowned. “That was years ago.”

“In my defense,” Jess said, leaning over the top of the couch to address Schmidt, “I did not know Nick was Spider-Man when I made that costume.”

**X X X X**

**About Four Years Earlier**

Nick swung down from the top of a high-rise on 9th Street, making a brief running stop on a seventh-floor balcony before landing (a little unsteadily) on top of a parked van.

“Not bad!” he commented, “B, maybe B- landing for the knees. Gotta start stretching.”

The one drawback to having a weird tingly sixth sense was that Nick had gotten a little complacent about visually checking his surroundings. Unfortunately, this sense did not go off when in proximity to someone that he spent a lot of time with. Say, a new and persistent roommate.

“Hi there, spider-guy,” Jess said brightly.

Nick looked down and nearly fell off the top of the van. “Jess!” he yelped, and then coughed. “I mean, jess-t swinging by, fighting crime. What are you doing here, fellow citizen?”

Jess held up a burgeoning plastic bag. “Maple Crafts sells the best pipe cleaners” she explained. “I’m a teacher, we’re making models of the digestive system this week. I gotta say, this is so cool, I’m a huge fan!”

Nick nodded nervously and tried to strike an authoritative pose. He felt like a very unsuccessful runway model instead. “Ma’am,” he said, trying to lower his voice, “there’s a bank robbery going on in that building over there, and it might get dangerous, I need you to leave.”

Jess saluted, because of course. “Yes sir, Mr. Spider-Man,” she said. “Just, my students would really flip if they knew I had met you, do you think I could get a picture?”

“No! No pictures, I don’t do pictures.” Muffled yells began to emit from the bank entrance across the street, and the side door busted open to the pinging sounds of bullets. A window shattered behind them.

“Oh not good, not good,” Nick said, jumping down from the van and grabbing Jess around the waist, scooping down to pick up the craft bag when she dropped it in alarm. “I am not very good at improvisation.”

Jess shrieked as Nick launched them both into the air, swinging upwards and away from the bullets. He landed them both on the top of a Sheraton roof, making sure to grab under Jess’s knees so that she wouldn’t stumble with the impact. Nick hadn’t factored in the intimacy of holding his roommate in a bridal-carry against the backdrop of the Los Angeles skyline. Jess’s craft bag dropped from his hands to the rooftop gravel with an incriminating _plop_.

“Wow,” she said, inches away from his face with her arms looped around his neck. Nick stared for a few moments before realizing that putting his face next to Jess’s when it was only half-covered in a ski-mask was probably not the best plan, disguise-wise.

“Are you okay?” he asked, setting her down on the roof and lightly patting around her shoulders and sides in a way that was probably not very effective for searching for bullet wounds. “You didn’t get hit, did you?”

“I'm good,” Jess said faintly. “Aren’t you going to go catch the bank robbers?”

Nick looked back down at the block they had fled, wincing at the loudly flashing blue and red lights. “Ah, hmmm, no, probably not. They’ve already hit the road, and you know, that bank had it coming. I actually hate banks.”

“Oh, okay,” Jess said tentatively. “You know, you’re kind of a weird superhero.”

Nick realized that he was still clutching her shoulders. He dropped them quickly.

“So I don’t mean this as a criticism, but have you considered changing your look?” Jess said abruptly, fidgeting with her glasses. “You kinda look like one of the trash muppets from Fraggle Rock.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was going for.”

“Cool, cool.” Jess looked over his outfit with her alarming ‘crafting’ expression. “Hey, how do you feel about polyester?”

“Ma’am, you should get home,” Nick said hurriedly, looking around for some kind of exit from the rooftop. “There should be a — yep, here it is—” He threw open a door to a semi-stable fire escape staircase gestured through it. “Why don’t you take those nice pipe cleaners and never tell anyone about this, yeah?”

Jess looked at him seriously, with the expression that he recognized from the time that he had started singing in the middle of a five-star restaurant.

This was not good.

It was one thing for Jess to occasionally look at her frumpy disaster of a roommate with surprised gratitude. It was another thing entirely for Jess to look at Spider-Man like he was some combination of Patrick Swayze and Abraham Lincoln.

“People should know about you,” she said with easy certainty, clutching her bag of crafts in front of her. “ I know that some news sites think that you’re some kind of hobo criminal, but what you did rescuing those senior citizens in February was amazing.”

“I accidentally set fire to a bowling alley that day. I think I technically caused more damage than I prevented.”

“Well, nobody’s perfect,” Jess said, shrugging. “But I think your heart was in the right place.”

It should have been Jess who got bit, Nick thought suddenly. Jess loves children and sunshine and justice and is tough and smart and strong. Jess would have made an amazing superhero.

“Well, absolute power corrupts absolutely,” he said, “so I figure that since I have mediocre power, I’ll probably accidentally drop a bus on myself before I become a war criminal.”

Jess tilted her head and squinted at him. “You know, you remind me of someone.”

Nick started sweating. “You’ve met a lot of hobo superheroes on rooftops?” he joked, inching back toward the edge.

“You’re my first,” Jess said, smiling. “But actually, this guy also hates banks and underestimates— “

“Gotta go!” Nick yelled, catapulting himself off of the roof. “Crime never sleeps!”

It’s how Nick would prefer to end most conversations, actually. It’s a shame that he can only do that as Spider-Man

(Two years later, while extremely drunk and wearing a women’s trenchcoat, Nick does try— and instantly remembers why it is a horrible idea while comforting a shrieking Schmidt)

Nick did actually circle back to the bank to make sure that no one had been hurt in the robbery, so by the time he swung back to the loft and changed behind the trash cans, Jess was already in the apartment and regaling Winston and Schmidt with a reenaction of her adventure.

“Spider-Man is a public menace,“ Schmidt snapped. “Last month when he threw that murderous investment banker out a window, he stopped up traffic near my office for three hours. I had to reschedule four meetings, it threw off my whole afternoon.”

Winston stared at him. “Schmidt, please go over every word of that sentence and think about your life choices.”

“Spider-Man is a hero!” Jess protested. “And to thank him for his civic duty, and more specifically for keeping me from being shot, I am going to make him a new suit.”

“Jessica,” Nick said, turning toward her with panicked eyes. “No. Do not do that. This guy is bad news. He could be dangerous! He could be a serial killer!”

“Nick, did you miss what I just said about the investment banker? He’s literally a serial killer.”

Nick snorted. “That guy brought an Uzi into his office, Schmidt, and it was only a second-story window. He _maybe _broke his spine.” He coughed. “At least, that’s what I think it said on the news.”

“Spider-Man, Spider-Man,” Jess sang softly while cutting through a swatch of red spandex that had mysteriously appeared on the kitchen table. “Does whatever a spider can.”

“Jess,” Nick asked in horror, “did you make Spider-Man a theme song?”

“He is so underprepared, Nick!” Jess said defensively. “And he saved my life! You didn’t see, it was like—” Jess used finger-guns to mimic a shootout. “Pew pew pew!” And I was right in the middle!”

“Jess, you were in the Fashion District, not the O-K Corral.”

“Winston!” Jess called, waving her felt scissors menacingly at Nick in response. “Can you come in here and be my model?”

“I can do that for you,” Nick protested.

“No, that won’t work. Spider-Man is taller than you.” Jess paused, tapping the flat end of the scissors to her temple. “Nick, you’re a writer! What rhymes with web?”


End file.
